This is especially the case when Kant turns to the subject of practical philosophy. Kant singles out
Plato’s employment of the ideas in this field:
It is, however, in regard to the principles of morality, legislation, and religion, where the
experience, in this case of the good, is itself made possible only by the ideas–incomplete as
their empirical expression must always remain–that Plato’s teaching exhibits its quite peculiar
merits.^12In the realm of the practical, Kant agrees with Plato that our ideas cannot come from empirical
reality because they transcend it by their very nature. For Kant, the moral law is a purely rational
idea. This can be illustrated by his claim that our ability to recognize examples of morality
(and immorality) in the world depends on our already-existing knowledge of the moral law.
As he writes:
:::if anyone is held up as a pattern of virtue, the true original with which we compare the
alleged pattern and by which alone we judge of its value is to be found only in our minds. This
original is the idea of virtue, in respect of which the possible objects of experience may serve as
examples (proofs that what the concept of reason commands is in a certain degree practicable),
but not as archetype. That no one of us will ever act in a way which is adequate to what is
contained in the pure idea of virtue is far from proving this thought to be in any respect
chimerical. For it is only by means of this idea that any judgment as to moral worth or its
opposite is possible; and it therefore serves as an indispensable foundation for every approach
to moral perfection.^13This passage is reminiscent of later ones dealing with the meaning and significance of Jesus Christ
inReligion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. There Kant argues,“there is no need, therefore,
of any example from experience to make the idea of a human being morally pleasing to God a model
to us; the idea is present as model already in our reason.”He adds that if someone requires“miracles
as credentials,”he“confesses to his own moral unbelief, to a lack of faith in virtue.”His point is that
miracles do not make believers, for it is only believers who will see or understand miracles as such:
“such faith alone can validate miracles, if need be, as effects coming from the good principle; it
cannot borrow its validation from them.”Likewise, Kant goes on to explain that believers can only
recognize Jesus as the Christ because they are already prepared to know the Christ when they meet
him:
:::an experience must be possible in which the example of such a human being is given (to the
extent that one can at all expect and ask for evidence of inner moral disposition from an external
experience). For, according to the law, each and every human being should furnish in his own
self an example of this idea. And the required prototype always resides only in reason, since
outer experience yields no example adequate to the idea; as outer, it does not disclose the
inwardness of the disposition but only allows inference to it, though not with strict certainty.^14These passages seem to suggest that the appearance of Christ in history is unnecessary or
unhelpful. Counterbalancing this impression, it is interesting to note in this context that Kant admits
that we do not know the genetic origin of the moral law within us:
But, precisely because we are not its authors but the idea has rather established itself in the
human being without our comprehending how human nature could have even been receptive
of it, it is better to say that that prototype has come down to us from heaven, that it has taken up
humanity.^1564 Steven F. McGuire